The Copenhagen summit on global cooling global warming climate change is barely started, and already impoverished nations are demanding handouts. Environment Minister Hasan Mahmud of Bangladesh says his country is entitled to a cubic buttload of money from the big nasty countries who arrogantly built successful societies while his government kept their citizens living in a rat hole.

From the BBC article:

“We are not begging any mercy from anyone. Rather we want justice as the worst victim of climate change,” Reuters news agency quoted Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a leading economist who is also part of the Bangladesh negotiating team, as saying.

Sorry, Quazi, you are begging. And if you’re a leading economist, why haven’t you done something to improve your own economy instead of crying “gimme gimme gimmie gimmie?”

Ed Begley Jr, one of the few AGW supporters who doesn’t fly around in private jets to complain about carbon footprints and one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers, has told “developing” countries they can adopt this song, royalty free, as their national anthem:

And so it begins. Countries where despots and idiots who have squandered every opportunity and wasted every natural resource are drooling over a new source of juicy handouts. We’ve handed them a new excuse, another way to claim “it wasn’t my fault.”

Widespread poverty is the direct result of government mismanagement, incompetence and stupidity. Africa, for instance, has amazing natural resources but is still pathetically poor. Why? The corruption and oppression in most African governments is even more legendary then their stupidity. They have turned down billions of tons of donated grain because Greens have convinced them it might contain a bit of genetically modified grain which will magically and horribly pollute their native species. They deal with AIDS by relying on deadly myths and superstitions. Ethnic and religious genocide is frighteningly common. Education is a joke.

Compare that to Hong Kong, which crams seven million people into 426 square miles. Their natural resources consist of about three square feet of farmland. Even though they have to import everything they have the most healthy and robust economy in the world. The difference between Hong Kong and African countries? Government. Hong Kong’s government lets people do pretty much anything they want, and it turns out that what they want to do is thrive.

Is it really that simple? Yeah, pretty much. My broad generalizations are ignoring subtleties and nuances, but in the big picture the wealth or poverty of any nation is the direct result of their government. Big corrupt governments impoverish their citizens. Small governments that get out of people’s way let them build their own wealth. And no country has ever become successful by relying on handouts.

I highly recommend P. J. O’rourkes “Eat The Rich,” where he travels around the world trying to understand why some economies work and most don’t. It’s not only the best economics book I’ve read, it’s funny as hell.

The Obama administration is hell bent on installing a cap and tax system that will cost each of us between one and two grand a year and will reduce greenhouse gasses by approximately nothing. While we’re still struggling to pay the bill for our own government’s incompetence – a bill that threatens to bankrupt us – we’ll be expected to support every other incompetent government as well. All they’ll have to do is blame their problems on climate change and the Obama administration will write them a check.

Contemporary philosopher Johnny Virgil sent me an e-mail containing this careful and well thought out analysis of the situation: “We are so fucked.”